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Tuesday, June 22, 2010

It's a good thing we love you dog....

Problem: Tank is allergic to gluten. It makes his paws and ears an itchy mess of yeasty gooey-ness that cause him alot of discomfort. It's horrible for him when it flares up, it's horrible for us watching it, and it's even worse having to listen to him lick his paws loudly in the middle of the night for relief.

Bigger Problem: The dog food we've had him on since we got him all of a sudden changed their formula and it now contains oatmeal (aka: gluten). We noticed the new bag design but figured it was a cosmetic change and never thought to check the ingredients. The bag also had no mention of any changes to the formula so this was the last thing we thought was causing his latest bout of itching. Unfortunately, we have 6-25lb bags of the offending food here in the house because we way over bought on sealift last year

Biggest Problem: Decide on a new food that didn't include gluten and get it here without breaking the bank. Waiting for this years sealift would be the cheapest way but then you have a yeasty, itchy dog for months. Since that's really mean, we decided to get ISHOP4U to send us some asap no matter what we had to pay.

In the end: We bought 2-30lb bags of Orijen dog food which is the food we decided to go with. (Company out of Calgary that has rave reviews from people I know who use it) The food is expensive but most quality food is, it's about the same price as the old stuff so no big deal. The kicker- it cost us $300 dollars to have it sent from Ottawa by Canadian North. Three hundred dollars, just for the shipping!!! We expected it to be expensive but to see it on your credit card statement still takes your breath away.

Moral of the Story: It's amazing to have a pet up here but wow, sometimes they cost you a fortune. Luckily Tank loves his new food to the point that he bounces when he sees Nick going for the bag. It's only been a day so we haven't seen improvement in his itching yet but hopefully he'll have relief soon.

One more thing: if you use Royal Canine food, they have apparently been bought out by another company and has changed the formulas for many of their foods. From what I read, gluten allergy or not, you don't want your dog eating grains so you may want to check your labels.

We've fed Olivia, Maddie and now our new kitten Orijen from day 1. They're all on the 6 fish and it keeps their coats shiny and healthy. Both the dogs and the cat go bonkers for this food...and it's very good for them. Yes it's expensive but I figure if they're my "fur children" then they deserve the best!

Hmmm. It shouldn't be the oatmeal. Steve has celiac disease, which is a gluten intolerance. North American oats used to be contaminated with gluten, but within the last year or so we've heard that oats are generally safe. He's been eating North American oats (especially Honeycombs cereal) for months with no problems.

Is there barley or rye in the mix? Or maybe some other form of wheat, like kamut?

We've known for a while about the gluten alergy and the new food has added Oatmeal as the second or third ingredient. I didn't look farther than so maybe there is something else down the line. Then again, maybe the oats they use in dogfood isn't exactly high quality.

Oh and Crystal, you were the inspiration for the new food. I knew you used it and liked it. I also liked that it was Canadian. Thanks for the recommendation even though it was a few years ago that you gave it.

Caribou probably would be if there was many around (I'm told you have to really go a ways out to find them around here) and two if I wanted to hunt it myself. The rest of the food is coming up on sealift so it won't be so expensive. We just didn't want to wait that long to give him some relief.

if you have a friend in the retail dog food business, you can probably ask if they can order it on your behalf directly from the orijen if you are making a big order. my friend here has 2 big husky dogs, and she does it this way, so its wayy cheaper. but yes it would've suck for it to be mailed to you. and the kicker, sometimes some US companies dont know nunavut, so you probably would've gotten a better deal buying in the States for better shipping. annoying eh!